The Sustainability Denial Patterns ... Sustainability At The Crossroads ... Sunday Thoughts ... Bioregional Nomads On The Road

Edition 31 | July 2025

Do folks here remember how the Lighthouse Keeper Newsletter started? The main reason was that readers wanted a continued observation of the findings of my 4-part series ‘The Big Sustainability Illusion’, published in February and March 2021. The headlines of these 4 parts already told the story in short:

Part 1: The Big Sustainability Illusion - how a whole crowd of incrementalist ESG progress proponents wants to make us think they support "Sustainability"

Part 2: The Big Sustainability Illusion - how limited ESG Progress understanding delivers irrevocable damage. A sequel.

Part 3: The Big Sustainability Illusion - how to escape the ESG bubble and finally deliver on sustainability!

Part 4: The Big Sustainability Illusion - goodbye ‘ESG LaLaLand’ and hello to the ‘New World’ of a regenerative & distributive economy!

The whole package was later also published as an r3.0 Opinion Paper, enriched by reader reactions and a nicer design.

Readers noticed that the first two parts fully focused on the problem side, the half-baked approach to just ESG Progress – called ‘Numeration Management’ – and presenting it ‘as if’ it had anything to do with sustainability, while it is just benchmarking or efficiency management in becoming less degenerative. Part 3 and 4 switched to the solution side and already introduced interventions that guided readers to the world ‘beyond ESG’ and towards ‘regeneration and fair share distribution.’ The meme #ESGLaLaLand that I coined there went viral and is often referred to when addressing the deafness of ESG practitioners to what’s really needed.

Ever since 2021 I published 30 editions of the Lighthouse Keeper Newsletter, commenting, warning and revealing from the contextual perspective of ‘Authentic Sustainability’, what the developments were ever since, often really painful, seen the urgency of real transformation to an economic system setup that would serve all life instead the of culmination of monetary wealth to just a few, with immense collateral damage, both for the environment, but also for humans and all other species. Anybody who walks through life with open eyes can see it, every day of the year! To be clear right from the start:

Our economic system design does not allow sustainability to be a success, so all uncontextualized efforts that try to squeeze sustainability into this system are bound to fail!

Sustainability Denial Patterns

So, here we are in mid-2025, and what I realized in the last couple of weeks is something that to me sounds like the ultimate end-game in burying sustainability, both just by a continuation of the Big Sustainability Illusion outcomes, but also taking it to a next level: I call this ‘The Sustainability Denial’, an inside coup of many prominent figures in the sustainability bubble, cocooning the idea of ‘as-is-sustainability thinking' in the existing economic model by

• shielding it from the transformational necessities of collapse, mainly by dissing those that warn of the huge shortcomings;
• falling back to the ‘taking people by the hands’ myth, by simply – without any proof – always falling back to the need for incrementalism (because ‘people aren’t ready for the radical brutality’ anything else than the daily madness already holds for them), again ‘as if’ culminating all incrementalism would lead to any transformation.
• a really confrontational denial of collapse, existing actually since 1972’s release of the ‘Limits To Growth’ studies by the Club of Rome, in which our economic system logic and the incumbents benefiting from it are using climate change, biodiversity loss, resource unavailability, human displacement just as lip service arguing for more incrementalism.

When I say ‘inside coup’, I don’t mean an intended act; but what I mean is the constant self-reinforcing cycle of supporting of each other’s posts, making it another ‘as-if-factual’ sort of consensus by constant ‘agree-ism.’

The real radical brutality here is that their denial of the urgency and the scale and pace really needed actually cause a power-over ‘brutality by force’, heavily exploited by the sick, narcissist, ignorant and greedy individuals elected into leader positions.

They refuse change by design by dissing concepts like degrowth, bioregionalism and regeneration. They call all sustainability ‘woke’ as it counters the idea of wild and free markets. They call regeneration naïve, way to go, impossible, unrealistic. They deny that this parallel world already does exist, it was just bulldozed by the mainstream economic system logic, but now gets more attention because people are desperate for change and want to personally engage locally. They refer to a need for a ’business case for sustainability’, the need to develop ‘value’ without concretising what sort of value is actually needed. Hint: it’s not ‘enterprise value’, while mostly all have exactly only that in mind.

I invite you to read a couple of posts on Linkedin and their threads. I have responded to some of them through comments, but also stopped responding to all, it’s too tiring doing so. Here are three outpourings that would fit into what I describe, clustered in patterns:

1)    Dissing David Suzuki’s Warning

Taking David Suzuki’s great article ‘It’s too late: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost’ as an example, an interview he gave to ipolitics, where we saw many of the protagonists I am talking about immediately dissed his view. This already led to a replica on Suzuki’s own website in which he further clarified his valid view. There he says:

‘The focus on politics, economics, and law are all destined to fail because they are based around humans. They’re designed to guide humans, but we’ve left out the foundation of our existence, which is nature, clean air, pure water, rich soil, food, and sunlight. That’s the foundation of the way we live and, when we construct legal, economic and political systems, they have to be built around protecting those very things, but they’re not.’

That’s the basic flaw here, expressed so eloquently. So, in consequence he says:

‘We have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems. For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down. The units of survival are going to be local communities, so I’m urging local communities to get together.’

I’d add: embrace bioregionalism!

Here’s how this whole discussion came up my way, namely through this post by Ingmar Rentzhog, which had the below – in my view – absolutely inappropriate visual:

Like a school child Rentzhog refuses to ‘give up, we’re not losing. We are closer than ever to winning. But only if we stay in the fight.’ This is the typical lingo of those without proper collapse acknowledging context as it is appropriately needed. I’d ask ‘what exactly are you fighting for?’ And is that just a continuation of trying to avoid collapse (useless in my view) or collapse resilience, meaning you have to accept that Suzuki is basically right and that you need to choose your battles differently?

Here's my response in the thread below this article: ‘A great example to showcase why the differentiation between collapse avoidance, collapse acknowledgement and the general need to notch up on collapse literature is so important. Suzuki very eloquently tells us to give up on collapse avoidance (the camp Ingmar is in as his mostly corporate and government clientele wouldn’t go any further than that and most likely his business case depends on this), but asks us to acknowledge collapse in order to better think about collapse resilience strategies. At r3.0 we went through this change a couple of years ago, as all datasets are clear: we are in a stage of collapse that can’t be avoided any longer. I am fully with David Suzuki, he puts us right where we all should be now, devoting our time to bioregional concepts as they have the potential to create islands of coherence in a sea of globalized madness! What’s needed in addition is then the regional, continental and global weaving, and that’s exactly what we devote our time to now.’

Another example of dissing David Suzuki came through a post by from Ketan Joshi, and got the same pushback of his form of denial. He says: ‘David Suzuki Foundation is wrong in a million different ways when they loudly declare that the fight is done, and that there's nothing left to do but continue making our lives harder and harder by burning fossil fuels and over-sizing agriculture.’ Well, that’s totally NOT what David said! David wants us to recalibrate to what’s still possible, while accepting what became impossible. Joshi also makes the same connection to the fossil fuel industry that Rentzhog did. Again, this is in my view dangerously inappropriate. It is very telling to read the thread below Joshi’s post and also the repost with comments by Kasper Reiner Bjørkskov, I can’t agree more with him when he writes:

‘The sheer ignorance of biophysical limits in this post is honestly astonishing. We have already transgressed critical planetary thresholds – this isn’t a debate about prevention anymore, it’s about preparing for collapse. The severity of that collapse is still up for debate, and it’s something we can influence, which is exactly what David Suzuki is saying. But the reality is: we lost. We didn’t manage to stay within the safe boundaries. At this point, any mitigation must be regenerative, not just less destructive, if we want to soften what’s coming.’

Halleluja, that’s exactly the point here. He continues: ‘The fact that people don’t understand that collapse can happen while we also work to avoid the worst outcomes is emblematic of a profound lack of scientific understanding. These aren’t either/or scenarios. We are already outside the safe operating space – the question now is whether we act in ways that restore life-support systems or continue with illusions of green growth and techno-fixes. The future is collapse awareness, bio-regional living and regenerative ways of being. This is the only way to survive what's to come. This is not doomerism this is scientific facts.’ He describes exactly why ‘sustainability as-is’ is lost.

I’ve addressed this topic also in my Sunday Thought #149.

2)    The Business Case of Sustainability Fallback

There’s also been an awful lot of articles or posts recently that returned to a discussion we had in abundance over the past decades, namely the need for a ‘business case for sustainability.’ Oh boy, I was thinking, here we go again. The most shocking thing is that what happens now in this world doesn’t care AT ALL if there is a business case, it all returns to questions of science and ethics and leftover scenarios in a collapsing economic system design. I’ve long argued that there’s ONLY a ‘sustainability case for business’, and nothing more than that. If you wait for a business case for sustainability for your organization or project, you’re doomed. This discussion is a placeholder of a completely off-track understanding of sustainability. But it keeps on coming. And responding with a plea to return to our collapse reality can create quite surreal discussions. Here’s an example:

Let me be clear, I really like Andrew Winston, a wonderful human being, I met him various times. He's the author of 'Green To Gold' and 'Net Positive' (together with Paul Polman). He has done a lot for sustainability and investment. Just recently, he and others reflected more nuanced around that question of the need for a business case in a post on Linkedin. I added a comment and was met with quite some opposition, just because I brought in collapse resilience needs as a contextual element that is so necessary in this discussion. Here’s how the discussion went (read from left to right and then down and again left to right):

It's a typical discussion that I often have, and those discussions are quite clarifying how far sustainability experts – often with a really long history and reputation – think what’s realistically and politically possible. And then they STOP there, or they become dizzy by saying 'you can do one thing, but you can do the other thing too.' No willingness to go beyond as it reaches the space of ‘unthinkable for me’. No blaming here, we are all fallable humans! My stance is clearly on what’s necessary from the end point of achieving bioregionalism and regeneration. So I also want to thank Andrew for that conversation, we both clarified where we stand. And that’s o.k..

You may also want to read another Andrew Winston post called ‘Sustainability isn’t dead – it’s under attack’. If you take a moment to read that post, I could have started the exact same discussion as above again. Luckily I didn’t have to respond, as Mark W. McElroy, PhD expressed it so nicely in the thread:

‘Are we talking about sustainability or incrementalism here? And how are companies and their managers supposed to tell the difference, since virtually none of them are equipped with the kinds of tools required to assess sustainability performance in authentic terms?’

He continues: ‘Unless authentic sustainability metrics are being used, what may be regarded as sustainable by one organization might be unsustainable to another. If the sustainability community cannot even reach consensus on the issue of how best to measure it (sustainability performance), why should anyone else take it seriously?’

Do you see the pattern? Lengthy discussions without contextual clarity, and the metrics and tools needed. Is a discussion about a ‘business case for sustainability’ even worth to have with these shortcomings, and furthermore not going beyond Enterprise Value Creation and not able to properly talk about needed System Value Creation in structured ways?

3)    The Incrementalism Fallback

Another series of posts clearly present reduced enterprise value perspectives, studies that sustainability would be on the rise, that companies would be ‘on it’ (not denying that a few really do) and that we’re all well on track.

Take Adam Elman’s post ‘Is sustainability still a core business priority? Absolutely and the data proves it!💰Budgets are up. 💡 ROI is measurable. 📈 Value creation is real. What's good for the planet is good for business ‘. Gosh, what an extreme feelgood message in #ESGLaLaLand. But simply plain wrong in the collapse resilience world we live in. The responses paint a clear picture. I disagreed, and others joined me in this:

Adam’s final plea explains the reductionism in great detail, saying ‘it's not true that everyone is stepping back from sustainability ... there remains a lot of positive work and momentum... which we need to accelerate!’ Would that acceleration lead to the successes we need. No, these views are under the impression that scaling up is needed. It’s not, we need scaling OUT to much more radical interventions.  

Another discussion that falls into the same category is in the post by Lawrence Helm, called ‘Sustainability has never been better and stronger than it is right now.’ Our colleague Bill Baue has a clear view in that post: ‘ In order for this to be true, we would need to see significant increases in corporations measuring, managing, and reporting their ecological and social impacts (across the board, not just SBTs) against contextually relevant sustainability thresholds. And yet this practice is essentially unheard of -- I've seen no hard evidence of it being significantly on the rise.’ Like so often, authors of such posts don’t engage with the criticism, they are just sending.

Another example is this post by Joel Makower, called ‘Is sustainable business dead?’, coming with this language: ‘The truth? Sustainability isn’t dead. It’s just growing up. Behind the scenes, companies are doubling down on the hard stuff: integrating sustainability into strategy, supply chains, risk management, and core operations. They’re talking less, but doing more. The performative era is giving way to one of pragmatism and progress.[...] Yes, some targets are being scaled back. Some commitments are being softened. But that’s not failure — it’s recalibration. It’s the messy, necessary evolution of a movement adapting to fierce political headwinds, economic uncertainty, and increasing scrutiny.[...] Still, this isn’t the end, not even close. It’s the beginning of a more rigorous, resilient sustainability agenda.’ Again, Bill had clear words, and note the cynicism he was met with: 

The point here again is that there is no clear differentiation in all of these discussions what is clearly ‘sustainability as-is’ and ‘regeneration as-needed’.

Many of these discussions, due to the lack of clear context and clarity and social media dynamics, quickly become personal and can lead to ad-hominem attacks. Very frustrating at times, totally avoidable, but my impression has become over the years that the ‘sustainability as-is’ community (I would guess 99% of the sustainability compliance machine) is not at all interested in that clarity. But without it, these discussions are useless.

Let’s close with a last example, brought to us by the great Ken Pucker in this post, citing an article from the weekly newsletter of Tim Mohin (an ex-CSO, and for some time the CEO of GRI). Tim has blocked me and my colleague Bill Baue a couple of years ago as he couldn’t stand our factual criticism. Let me give you this visual from the newsletter: 

I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing there. Ken already asked good questions, challenging the assumptions and giving his view of reality. I couldn’t resist by responding as well:

Well, I continue to be in disbelief that ‘sustainability leaders’ really post this. Gosh, they must have children and grandchildren. Will they ever understand? Maybe not! 

Sustainability At The Crossroads

There is a huge level of frustration about the situation that ‘sustainability as-is’ is totally missing the boat. Very often I miss an elaboration of the transition to ‘regeneration as-needed’; often you just read ‘well, we then need to fight harder’. I disagree, that’s not the point, this not about fighting harder, it is about letting go of useless fights and recalibrate to necessary interventions, knowing that the ‘empire strikes back’, so none of that comes without collaterals. I appreciated the post from Mike Hower, ‘With so many feeling discouraged around sustainable business right now, I've been reflecting on how my drive for this work has changed over the years.’ His post comes from the heart, but again – and I haven’t commented – I am missing the next step into scaling out, and not staying at ‘We need to be able to take the punches and keep on fighting.’ Isn’t it possible to hide away from the punches by having a totally different game plan? Wouldn’t that be much more exciting? I am talking from a position where we at r3.0 went through that in the last years. It is so much more refreshing and enlightening than to take more punches. Letting go is such an underrated part of that strategy!

In that regard I was surprised about the level of candid observations that Globescan just came up with, releasing the ‘Sustainability at the crossroads report 2025’, and summarizing the outcomes as:

• Stalled progress and rising backlash: Experts express frustration with the slow pace of change and note the growth of organized resistance to the sustainability agenda, particularly in North America. However, this backlash is not universal – Asia-Pacific stakeholders report far less resistance.
• Eroding confidence in global frameworks: Belief in the effectiveness of the SDGs, Paris Agreement, and other multilateral frameworks is low, with many experts questioning the ability of these frameworks to deliver the necessary impact.
• Underperformance by key actors: National governments and institutional investors receive the lowest performance ratings, with only 5 percent of experts rating government efforts as excellent. The private sector also fares poorly, and its performance scores have declined to the lowest point since tracking began in 2012.
• Declining faith in civil society: Since 2012, positive ratings have dropped precipitously for social movements (-21%), NGOs (-16%), multi-sector partnerships (-15%), and the UN (-12%). In contrast, research and academic institutions have gained credibility over the past few years.
• Diverging regional perspectives: Experts in Europe and Africa / Middle East are the most critical of progress, while those in Latin America / Caribbean and Asia-Pacific are more optimistic and more likely to see current political and economic shocks as opportunities rather than threats.

Overall, this represents the consequences of ‘sustainability as-is’, and I applaud their candid assessment. But then comes the ‘but’. The downside of these reports however is that they don’t take the next step by asking ‘where do we go from here.’ Well, that’s I guess mainly because their survey respondents don’t think about that in ways they could express it (and of course weren’t asked). In consequence it does not open up the discussion of ‘regeneration as-needed.’ Nearly everybody not crossing the line is so stuck in ‘sustainability as-is.’

Enough! I am pretty sure I haven’t made much friends in the ‘sustainability as-is’ world with this new addition of the Lighthouse Keeper Newsletter. Do I need to care? I do, in general, but I am also observing that with every ‘opportusultant’ I lose, I win over 10 new ‘prosultants’ that appreciate my views and know they now need to 'break out to break through.' Something has to give, sometimes. I can deal with that.

Sunday Thoughts

Here are all Sunday Thoughts that got published since the last edition of the Lighthouse Keeper Newsletter:

A Sunday Thought (#150): ‚The Right To Clean Air, Water, Soil‘ - what are international court decisions actually worth? (July 27, 2025)

A Sunday Thought (#149): ‘Defending Sustainability’ - A Special Form Of Denial (July 20, 2025)

A Sunday Thought (#148): ‘Screw Up Your Reputation’ - just follow sustainability reporting standards (July 13, 2025)

A Sunday Thought (#147): ‘1.000 % Overshoot’ - How To Keep Active Hope (July 6, 2025)

A Sunday Thought (#146): ‚Anomalies‘ - The Belittlement of Ongoing Collapse (June 29,2025)

A Sunday Thought (#145): ‘Bioregional Realities’ - The Noise Of Useless Politics So Far Away (June 22, 2025)

A Sunday Thought (144): ‚Seeds‘ - The Necessity to Understand the Predicament (May 25, 2025) 

Bioregional Nomads on the Road

This is a new series of us feeling into, experiencing and weaving between bioregions, and started in April this year. My wife Alexandra and I have decided to become Bioregional (and Digital) Nomads, travelling all over Europe and meeting people on the ground ‘doing it.’ Our first shorter and longer trips have happened and we’re writing a sort of logbook of our experiences and publish them in short posts on Linkedin. In every Lighthouse Keeper we’ll also share the links. Edition # 10 is a first resumé after 4 months. Here you go:

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#1): Eemlandhoeve – Part 1

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#2): Eemlandhoeve – Part 2

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#3): Places that show us the way

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#4): Ashanti Kunene

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#5): Bioregional Food Markets

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#6): Rhine River

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#7): Main River 

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#8): Biodiversity and Culture

Bioregional Nomads on the Road (#9): Untouched Woods

Bioregional Nomads on The Road (#10): a 4-months Resumé

Wishing you all a great summer/winter, wherever you are on this planet!